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He filled the space, and he wasn’t even in it yet. So tall, so impossibly broad. He made her feel small. He made her feel weak.
He made her feel like he was looking straight through her.
That brief moment of hope was crushed beneath the weight of that stare. That knowing, intense stare. For just a second, she’d had freedom.
And now, there was Cristian.
“I am not,” he said, his tone hard, uncompromising. Like everything else about him.
“Well, did you come to congratulate me on my upcoming marriage? Because if so—”
“Quiet,” he said, brushing past her and into the apartment. “I am not here to play games with you. Were you ever going to tell me?”
“About...” Her throat was completely dry and excuses were swirling around her head like foxes chasing their tails.
“The baby,” he said.
“I... I don’t...”
“I know,” he said, his lip curling slightly. “I know that you were the one. And I know you found out that it was me, so do not stand there looking like a wounded innocent.”
She frowned. “I am not an innocent. As you have no doubt deduced.”
“There is no star in the East, so you must not be.”
She crossed her arms, as if it might put a barrier between them. “Nice of you to check for divine symbols before you came.”
“So you admit that you knew. You admit that you knew that I am the father of your child.”
“I admit no such thing.” She crossed her arms, wishing that she could fold in on herself. Wishing that she could disappear completely.
“And yet, you said that I should know that you aren’t an innocent. How else would I know if I weren’t the one to take your innocence?”
“Oh, I don’t know. The simple fact that I’m pregnant? Honestly, Cristian, it could be anyone’s. I’m a known whore.”
“Enough,” he said, his tone firm. “What is the point of this fiction, Allegra?”
“The point of this fiction is that I don’t want to deal with you. I don’t want to deal with this. I... I would never... I would never have touched you if I’d have known that it was you.”
“But it was.” There was a dark light in his eyes, but it looked nothing like triumph. It was a grim sort of determination. He was no happier about this than she was. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that.
“I don’t want you,” she spat, feeling desperate. “I don’t. I had no idea that it was you.”
“Don’t flatter yourself by believing even for one moment I thought it was you, Allegra. You are nothing more than a spoiled child. One who threw away a future that would have been infinitely preferable to this one. You have never understood what you had. You have never understood all your parents have done for you.”
“If I don’t, then Renzo doesn’t either. And yet, you seem to be able to continue in association with him without lecturing him every thirty seconds.”
“Renzo has taken over the running of your father’s company. He has not shirked his duties.”
“Or, you have a double standard.”
“If I have a double standard, then it is not a different double standard than that held by the rest of the world.”
She flung her hands up into the air. “Congratulations then, you’re as infinitely terrible as the majority of the population.”
Silence settled between them. It was not an empty silence. It was full. Of anger, of something else that she did not want to identify.
“If there is one thing I have learned, Allegra,” he said, his superior tone maddening, “It’s that you cannot outrun consequences. It doesn’t matter who your father is. It does not matter how much money you have. Consequences will catch up to us all.”
“Especially when you don’t use a condom,” she shot back.
Perhaps she wasn’t blameless in the lack of contraception, but he was the man. Surely he should have been responsible for that. She had been a virgin, besides.
“You didn’t say anything.”
“You made it clear you didn’t want me to speak!”
“You didn’t protest,” he said.
She growled. “You don’t have to do this. I was prepared to deal with this by myself.”
His dark eyes narrowed. “What is your definition of dealing with it?”
“I was going to have this baby and raise it as a single mother. It isn’t as though I don’t have assets. My parents are upset, but they’re hardly going to cut me off.” She was bluffing. Her parents were infuriated and she had no idea what they would do at this point.
“You think?”
“Well, even if they do, Renzo won’t.” Honestly, she wasn’t entirely certain about her parents. They had not spoken to her since she had told them the news.
But her parents had been so deeply enmeshed in every aspect of her life for so long, she couldn’t really imagine them fully disowning her. She had no idea what her mother would do with her time. But then, maybe that had more to do with the impending royal wedding than an actual desire to spend any time with Allegra. Allegra didn’t want to think about that.
“Frankly, I don’t care whether or not your parents are planning to disown you, or whether or not your brother will support the child and you. You are not doing this alone.”
“No one will believe that we slept together. Nobody.”
He chuckled, a dark sound that wound its way through her body, wrapping itself around her veins, heating her blood. He had never affected her like this before. Usually, when Cristian heated her blood it was because he made her angry. This was something else. A shared memory of the two of them that she didn’t want.
“We did not sleep together,” he said, his voice filled with grim humor. “We had sex. Against a wall.”
Heat stung her face. “No one will believe we did that either.”
“Why? Because of my impeccable reputation?”
“For a start.”
“But no one has to know how it happened. Obviously, when we present this to the world it will be in a much different light. You will, of course, tell your parents that you have fallen in love with me, and it was your great passion and deep feelings for me that inspired you to compromise your engagement.”
She sputtered. “They will be more inclined to believe that you impregnated me in a public hallway without knowing my identity.”
“Is that so?”
“No one will believe that I love you. Everyone knows how we feel about each other.”
“That’s fine. It isn’t my reputation that will suffer as a result. You were the one who was engaged. You are the woman. Therefore, all of the judgment will be heaped on top of you.”
She snorted. “It’s already being heaped upon me. In case you hadn’t checked out a headline recently.”
“It may surprise you to hear this, but my life does not revolve around reading news stories concerning your exploits.
“Why should I read the tabloids? I went to Renzo instead and he knew much more than any of the so-called breaking news.”
She recoiled. “Does that mean that... Does Renzo know?”
“Renzo is not an idiot. I assume that once I began questioning him about what costume you had worn to the ball, and then stormed out after the revelation of your pregnancy—combining that with your inquiries about me earlier—he was able to do a bit of simple math.”
“But you’re still alive,” she said, confident that if her brother truly knew that she had made love to Cristian, Cristian would, in fact, be dead.
“Of course. I’m sure it only makes sense to him that I had no idea it was you. He knows that under normal circumstances I would never consider touching you.”
Rage and wounded feminine pride poured through Allegra like a toxic elixir. “Well, he must be very proud that your standards are so high. I’m so sorry that my identity was a disappointment to you. However, we both know that you quite enjoyed what happened. In fact, you enjoyed it so much that it was extremely brief.”
His top lip curled. “You enjoyed it no less for the brief nature of it.”
“So confident?”
“I have a very strong memory of how intensely you came around me, Allegra,” he said, his voice rough. “You cannot fake that.”
“Women,” she said, her voice trembling, “can fake things.”
“Women can only fake things if their partner is stupid, or inexperienced. I am neither.” He took a step toward her. “I felt you. I felt you trembling. I felt the waves as they washed through you. I felt your pleasure as keenly as I felt my own. Do not pretend it was somehow less than satisfying now that you know my identity.”
“It’s so important for you to have your male ego stroked, and yet you can barely stand the sight of me. That’s sort of twisted, Cristian.”
He laughed, dark, merciless. “I never claimed to be anything else.”
“You don’t want me. I doubt you want the baby.”
“Oh,” he said, “that’s where you’re wrong. I need the baby.”
“If you need him for some kind of ritual sacrifice then you’re definitely out of luck.”
“No, thank you. My life has quite enough death in it without adding any more, thank you. That was very poor humor.”
She looked away. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize to me now. You don’t mean it.”
“Why do you need the baby?”
“Because. For as humbly as I present myself, I am in fact an aristocrat. A duke.”
“I did know. Your arrogance announces it before you walk into a room.”
“Then you must surely understand that I require an heir. A legitimate heir. My child cannot be born a bastard, Allegra. Neither can I afford to miss this opportunity.”
“Our...baby is an opportunity?”
“Certainly it is an opportunity for my bloodline. I am a widower, and thanks to those circumstances I have failed to produce an heir. As I am now in my thirties, it becomes yet more and more important. Of course, my own father produced his heir quite by accident. But in spite of the fact that my mother was nothing more than a washed-up model, he still did the right thing by her, by me and by the dukedom dependent upon the bloodline continuing. I can do no less. Don’t you agree?”
“What exactly are you proposing?”
“Exactly that. I am proposing.”
“What?” Her heart was thundering so hard, her blood pouring through her ears. She felt like she was underwater. Could hardly breathe, could scarcely hear anything.
“Allegra Valenti, you are having my baby. And you will be my wife.”
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_51b642bd-490f-5aaa-88c9-7faa3d9d7c5e)
CRISTIAN STARED AT the recalcitrant woman sitting across from him on his private plane. He could not remember a woman ever looking quite so angry when in the presence of such luxury. At least, as far back as he could remember. It had been quite some time since he’d had a woman on his plane in that sense of the word.
Quite some time since he’d had a lover.
Not that Allegra was his lover. She absolutely was not. A quick screw against the wall didn’t make her anything. It simply made him weak.
Three years of celibacy. It was to be expected, he supposed. And yet, he had not imagined that he would be punished quite so spectacularly for his loss of control. He felt as though he had been punished enough.
Clearly, there was a particularly capricious deity somewhere that disagreed.
And such a punishment was Allegra Valenti.
She was looking particularly pretty and sulky, nearly curling in on herself as she leaned against the window, as though she would rather be thrown through it and hurled down to the earth than spend one more moment in his presence.
“Have you anything to say, Allegra?”
“Why? I believe I shouted it all at you in the apartment. And again when we got into the car. I could shout the same things at you, but I fear it would be repetitive.”
“Oh, please do. I never tire of your excuses. All of which are incredibly selfish.”
“It isn’t selfish to think perhaps it isn’t the best idea for two people who can’t stand the sight of each other to get married.”
“Why not? Plenty of people do it. You only have to survive it until death separates us.”
“How easy is it to get a hold of arsenic in Spain?”
“Such a delight, Allegra. How is it that you and I never acted on our feelings for each other before?”
“You mean the arsenic feelings?”
